Brass Ring (8 page)

She set the photograph of Margot and her family on the passenger seat of her car and looked again at the taller boy. Randall. Randy. With his dark hair and his adolescent gawkiness, he didn’t quite fit in. He squinted in the sunlight, and from between his dark lashes, his eyes seemed to be looking directly at the camera. At her.

She glanced over at the picture from time to time during her drive back to Vienna, her gaze drawn to the narrow-eyed boy. He had tried to get through to Margot, Ginger had said. He had tried to save her, too. Who better than Randy St. Pierre could understand how it felt to fail in that effort?

VIENNA

THE LUNCH CROWD AT
Carney’s Cafe was boisterous as usual, but Jon had requested a table in the rear of the restaurant, and he and Pat were at least able to carry on a conversation. Carney’s was their favorite lunchtime restaurant, despite its perpetually fevered level of activity. Like Jon, Pat Wykowski used a wheelchair, and Carney’s had an easily negotiated ramp to the front door and plenty of open space between the tables. The fact that the food was palatable was merely a bonus.

Claire was on her way home from West Virginia. She’d called him from the road a few minutes before he left the office and told him about her meeting with the social worker at the psychiatric hospital. He’d listened to her as patiently as he could. He didn’t understand her preoccupation with Margot St. Pierre. Something was changing in Claire, and it worried him. She wasn’t keeping up with her work at the foundation, and at home he’d catch her staring off into space. If this sort of obsession had occurred in anyone else, he might have been able to make some sense of it. But Claire was a woman who could rise above the worst experiences with a shrug of her shoulders and some cliche about no one ever promising her a rose garden. To someone who didn’t know her well, Claire could seem almost simple. But simple was not a word he could ever imagine applying to his wife.

The waiter stopped by their table to take their orders.

“My regular.” Pat flashed her dimples at the young man with his long dark ponytail. The waiter nodded and turned to Jon, who ordered the grilled swordfish. Pat’s regular, Jon knew, was the large, weedy-looking house salad. He felt a little sorry for Pat, his sympathy unrelated to the fact that her injury—sustained in a boating accident at the age of fifteen—was far more debilitating than his. He felt sorry for her because she could put on weight just by thinking about food. She was beautiful, although he supposed his assessment of her was colored by the fact that she was the person he felt closest to in all the world next to Claire and Susan. She had thick blond hair that fell in waves over her shoulders, and huge, sexy, green eyes in the sort of face men dream about. She was feisty, earthy, a little crass. And she was at least thirty pounds overweight. She dressed in drab colors and shapeless blouses that made her look as though she was carrying a sack of potatoes around in her wheelchair.

Driving to the restaurant in Pat’s van, he’d considered talking to her about Claire, sharing his niggling concern about her preoccupation with Margot. Pat was the foundation’s psychologist and a great listener. He’d changed his mind by the time they’d pulled into the parking lot. He was probably making too much of it. It had only been a week since that traumatic night in Harpers Ferry. He’d been safe inside the Jeep while Claire had dangled from the edge of the bridge. Who was he to judge how long it should take her to get over an experience that horrific?

Pat glanced out the restaurant window at the gray sky. “It’s gonna snow again,” she said merrily. “I can feel it. If I don’t go skiing soon, I’ll be crawling the foundation walls.”

The waiter approached their table once more, setting Jon’s swordfish in front of him and a bowl of rabbit food in front of Pat. Jon watched Pat dab the thick white dressing onto her salad with a fork.

“Do you have some ski trips planned?” he asked.

“Uh-huh. With the club. How about you and Claire joining us this year?”

He rolled his eyes. “When are you going to give up?” he asked.

“Never.” She leaned toward him. “Come on, Jonny. You’re always telling me what a hot skier you were as a kid.”

He
had
been good, before the accident. When the mono-ski was invented a few years ago, Claire tried to lure him into going, but he resisted. It simply wouldn’t be the same. And the thought of going with a club of paras and quads—a club funded by his foundation— was particularly unappealing to him. The club was Pat’s outlet. What else did she have? No spouse, no lover, no family close by. He couldn’t imagine the emptiness that waited for her at home each night. Pat was usually cheerful, but sometimes he caught a glimpse of that core of loneliness inside her, and he hurt for her.

“Well, I’m going to have a word with Claire about this,” Pat said. “She and I will talk you into skiing. You two are always working, you know that? You never have any fun.”

“Sure we do.”

“When? Name it. When was the last time you took a trip together?”

He started to answer, but she interrupted him.

“Not related to work,” she said. “When’s the last time you just goofed off together or laughed until you peed in your pants? When, huh?”

“Peeing in my pants is not my idea of a good time,” he said.

They talked about travel and vacations for a few more minutes before Jon managed to shift the conversation to plans for the retreat. But he couldn’t get Pat’s words out of his mind. Could she be right? He didn’t need a break, but maybe Claire did. Maybe that was all it would take to wipe that night on the bridge from her memory.

It was dark as he drove home from the gym that night. The cold air still held the promise of snow, and as he turned onto the winding forested road leading to his house, a few flakes began to dust his windshield. By the time he pulled into his driveway, he had to turn on the windshield wipers. The snow was dry and powdery, though, and flew off the glass almost before the wipers touched it.

He pulled the Jeep into the garage, noticing that Claire had parked her car very close to his space, leaving him too little room to get his chair out. She must have been preoccupied. A bad omen.

He pressed on the horn a couple of times, the sound loud and sharp inside the garage. He waited in the Jeep, hoping against hope that the Claire who came out to move her car would be the same woman he had known and loved for the past twenty-three years and not her gloomy shadow. Maybe her afternoon at the hospital had provided her with a sort of catharsis that would allow her to close the door on Margot St. Pierre.

Claire didn’t appear. He backed the Jeep out of the garage and pulled his chair from behind the front seat. Snowflakes fluttered in the air around him as he got out of the car. With his briefcase in his lap, he wheeled through the garage toward the house. The ramp to the back door made his arms ache a little—he’d pushed himself harder than usual at the gym. He could feel his muscles stiffening up.

She wasn’t in the kitchen. As he rested his briefcase on one of the chairs, he noticed the music. Claire favored old, old rock and roll. Not too heavy. Motown, mostly. Some rhythm and blues. But the music pouring from the stereo was classical. Piano.

Chopin, no doubt.

Damn it.

Claire walked into the kitchen. She was wearing jeans, a green sweater, and green tennis shoes. Her hair was loose, hanging long and dark over her shoulders. He caught its clean scent as she bent low to kiss him.

“This is the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor,” she said. “Remember? The one Margot mentioned on the bridge? Isn’t it beautiful?”

He looked up at her eyes. Her smile was enough to soften his irritation, and he wrapped his hand around her denim-covered thigh, squeezing lightly. “Yes,” he said. “It’s almost as beautiful as you are.”

SEATTLE

VANESSA CHANGED INTO HER
running clothes—the blue warm-up suit Brian had given her for Christmas and her Nikes—and took the five flights of stairs down to the ground floor of the hospital. She walked through the long hallway to the rear of the building and knocked on the open door to Darcy Frederick’s office.

“Ready?” she asked.

Darcy looked up from her littered desk, her glasses slipping halfway down her nose. “Oh, Van.” She used both hands to adjust the heavy, purple frames on her delicate nose. “I can’t go today. I’m swamped.”

Vanessa pushed into the office and dug Darcy’s running shoes out of the canvas bag in the corner. She dropped them on the floor in front of her friend. “Off your butt, Darce.”

They’d been running together for over two years, and both of them knew this routine. Darcy would probably never get out of the building if she didn’t have Vanessa pushing her. Vanessa, though, would run with or without a partner. She had to. By the end of the day, she felt as though thousands of restless, prickly creatures coursed beneath the surface of her skin. The only way to settle them down was to do something physical. Aerobics would work, or biking. Anything. But running was easiest.

Darcy made a halfhearted attempt at straightening the papers on her desk before finally standing up. She took off her glasses and ran her fingers through her short, almost-black hair before picking up her gym bag and disappearing into the bathroom across the hall. In a moment she was back in a gray sweatshirt and black warm-up pants.

“Ready,” she said, and Vanessa followed her out the door.

They walked the first block, then started an easy jog. Anyone watching them would have expected Darcy to be the faster, fleeter runner. She stood a good six inches taller than Vanessa, with broad shoulders and long legs, while Vanessa was slight and golden. But Vanessa was quicker by far.

“So, how’re the kids doing?” Darcy asked as they turned off the main road onto a side street.

“Wasn’t a great day. One of my CF kids is pretty sick.” Jordan Wiley was no better, despite the antibiotics. It had been nearly a week, and she’d expected to see some improvement by now. “And we found laxatives stashed in one of the anorexics’ teddy bear.”

“You’re kidding!” Darcy grinned, and Vanessa had to laugh herself.

“Yeah. I couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t gaining any weight. Kid’s too clever for her own good.”

They ran in silence for another block.

“Well.” Darcy was beginning to lose her wind already. “I think I’ve figured a way for you to get federal funding for the AMC program.”

“Really?” Vanessa glanced at Darcy, afraid to get her hopes up.

“Uh-huh. Have you heard of Walter Patterson? Senator from Pennsylvania?” The words came out between Darcy’s puffs of breath.

Walter Patterson. The name was vaguely familiar. “Not sure.”

“You need to contact him. You and your network. He’s a zealot on programs that aid victims, and he’s forever sponsoring legislation to help women and children. He can be an advocate for you, or at least he could point you in the right direction. But I think you should get the whole network involved. You know, make it a major deal.”

Vanessa didn’t respond right away. She was thinking about the network—that informal group of physicians and health-care professionals she’d pulled together from around the country when she’d started working at Lassiter. They had in common their commitment to issues affecting adolescents, and Vanessa was their indisputable hub. She knew that hers was not the only AMC program being affected by cuts. Terri Roos’s program in Sacramento was in jeopardy,

and a particularly innovative project in Chicago had already shut down. Darcy was right—she should involve the entire network. She could check on this Patterson guy, then mobilize her forces to descend on him from all corners of the country.

“Federal money’s so tight, though,” Vanessa said finally.

“It was tight last year when my sister got money for the Rape Counseling Program in Philadelphia. And it was Walter Patterson that got it for her.”

“Really?”

“Really. My sister called him up with statistics on how many women she was reaching, et cetera, and filled out a few reams of paperwork and eventually got what she needed.”

Darcy stopped running and leaned over to catch her breath while Vanessa jogged in place. It was rare for Darcy to give such high praise to a male. She was even critical—far too critical—of her own husband. Patterson must be a saint.

Vanessa started running again with a burst of energy fueled by a new glimmer of hope, and Darcy fell in next to her as they crossed the street. The long stone wall of a cemetery materialized next to them in the darkness, and a string of leafless maple trees bowed low over their heads.

“So all I have to do is call this guy and charm the money out of him?” Vanessa asked.

Darcy laughed. “You couldn’t charm milk out of a cow, Van,” she said. “Charm ain’t your long suit.”

“I suppose not,” Vanessa admitted.

They ran along the wall in silence for a few minutes, and by the time Darcy spoke again, she was panting in earnest. “Well,” she said, “you’re not going to believe this.”

“Believe what?”

“I’m pregnant.”

Vanessa stopped running, but Darcy didn’t. She teased Vanessa with the distance between them, leaving her with a disconcerting reaction of elation and envy, joy and loss. Vanessa wanted Darcy the way she had her now—a child-free woman like herself, devoted to her work, able to run with her in the evening.

She started running again and caught up quickly. Catching Darcy by the arm, she pulled her friend into a hug.

“Congratulations, Darce.” She felt like crying and bit her lip to hold the tears at bay.

Darcy drew away with a grin and leaned back against the stone wall, gulping air. “I thought it would never happen. All those tests. I mean, I’d look at you and Brian and see how good you two are without kids and think, ‘Well, Dave and I can be like that, no big deal.’ But the difference is that we really, really wanted them and you guys don’t and it—”

“What makes you think we don’t want kids?”

Darcy looked surprised. “I just figured. You’re thirty-eight and Brian’s forty—right?—and you haven’t done it yet, and I figured the two of you made a decision that kids weren’t important to you, and you were perfectly happy the way you are.”